Phoenix
by Imaginari-Mari
Summary: AU. Peeta is rescued from the Quarter Quell, not Katniss. As Katniss is tortured in the Capitol, Peeta is forced to become the face of the rebellion, the Phoenix, while the Mockingjay is tortured in the Gilded Cage. Not meant to copy anyone, my take
1. Chapter 1: Ashes

**PHOENIX**

**Description:** AU. Peeta is recused from the Quarter Quell, not Katniss. Katniss is tortured in the Capitol, leaving Peeta to become the face of the rebellion, the Phoenix, while the Mockingjay is tortured in the Gilded Cage. When Katniss returns, broken and hijacked, can the Rebellion survive? Or, with history changed, will the Capitol continue, even more terrible than before?

**Ch. 1: **Ashes.

I come to in a bed, my arms attached to machines with tubes and wires. I have a bandage over my left temple and eye, and there is no one else in the room. The only sounds are the steady beeps of the machines, and my suddenly fast and harsh breathing.

_Katniss! Where is Katniss?_

The last thing I remember is being with Finnick, Katniss shooting an arrow through the forcefield - and then nothing. Just being here. She should be here. Where is she? Where am I? What happened in the Quell? Who is dead? Who is alive - are we in the Capitol? Are they going to torture us, kill us, execute us and our families like they did with Seneca Crane?

The questions spin around and around my head as I look wildly around with my one uncovered eye. I look down at my body - it seems whole, except for the healing scars on my arms, and the legs exposed by what appears to be a hospital gown. I must have been injured when the force field blew. But what happened after that? I find myself standing up, and the machine beeps wildly as I rip the wires from my arms.

I have to find Katniss. I was supposed to keep her alive - Haymitch and I made a promise - but where is she?

I open the door to the room, and am faced with a small, narrow hallway. A door is ajar only 10 feet away and I try to be quiet, try to be stealthy, try to step with all the cat-like grace of Katniss when she's hunting. I manage to get to the door without making a sound, and then my legs fail me, my head swims, and I fall into the metal door, the weight of my body opening it with a booming crash.

"Peeta!" I hear Haymitch, shocked at my sudden entrance.

A large man with a ridiculous mustache looks up, startled, then grins. "Ah! He's awake."

It takes me a minute to realize who he is. "Plutarch. The Gamemaker."

"You remember me." He sounds delighted.

"So we're in the Capitol? Who won? Where is Katniss?"

Haymitch approaches me, cautiously, reaches out a hand to place on my shoulder.

"We aren't in the Capitol. We are on a hovercraft headed to District 13."

This doesn't register. He didn't answer the most important question.

"Where is Katniss?"

"We got you out of the arena just in time - the forcefield blew everything sky high. We were able to get you and Finnick out, but-" Begins Plutarch, but I cut him off.

"_Where is Katniss?" _my voice rises to a shout, more anger in it than I have ever heard, the pain and terror rising an building when I realize that there is something big, something important, that neither of these men are telling me.

"Peeta, we- we couldn't get her out. We grabbed you, and then the Capitol got her. We only just made it out before you passed out, unconscious."

Haymitch's eyes bore into mine, surprisingly sober, begging me to stay with him, begging me to handle this, because he needs me to handle it. But that is just too monumental a task to ask.

My jaw drops open, and a gut-wrenching howl leaves my mouth. My knuckles are suddenly bloody, there is a crack as the bones in my hand break when it makes contact with the wall, then another as I punch Plutarch, punch Haymitch, throw a chair. But I don't feel a thing.

I am drowning in pain, in agony - because Katniss isn't here, she's in the Capitol, in their hands, and without a doubt, President Snow is going to kill her. I couldn't save her.

_Katniss... _

I am suddenly aware of pain again when something sharp pricks my shoulder, and I am falling, the world blurry and swirling, and then black.


	2. Chapter 2: Blowing Away

**PHOENIX**

**A/N: **Thank you all for kind reviews! I hope to keep this story up to par. I am trying to echo the plot of Catching Fire and Mockingjay as best as I can, but there are some significant changes. Peeta is a different person than Katniss, and understands people on a whole other level. He wouldn't react the same way to things that she would, and people do treat him differently. I hope that is reflected in the story, and that the changes I've made make sense.

**Ch. 2: Blowing Away**

I come to strapped down to a table. The bandage over my head is gone, and I can see out of both eyes. But my arms and legs ache, my head feels leaden, and my throat is hoarse. None of this compares to the weight in my chest, the awful hole torn through my heart. I've been screaming while sedated, thrashing about so much that they had to keep me pinned to the table with leather straps and buckles.

It doesn't matter.

Katniss is in the Capitol, probably being tortured this very moment, strapped down to a similar metal table with similar leather straps, but not for her own safety. No, she's strapped down so she can't resist when President Snow takes a knife to her beautiful olive skin, or breaks her leg, or pulls her arms out of its socket-

I begin to scream again, the animal-like howls tearing from my already ravaged throat because I am a failure, because I deserve to be the one tortured in the Capitol, because I had nothing to live for but Katniss and she's as good as dead, maybe better off dead, maybe -

Someone pushes a button, a machine beeps, and I am launched into what isn't sleep, but only a dreamless state hovering between asleep and awake. I can't move my limbs, I can't speak, I can only think- and this thinking makes everything worse and worse, because all I see is Katniss being tortured, Katniss' face, the last time we kissed, the pearl, the locket, and my own stupidity and failure.

I wake up again, days later, hours later, minutes later - I have no concept of time. When I gather the energy, I look around - and notice that the room is different, larger with more beds. There are no more straps holding me down, just a hospital gown around my body and my arms still attached to the eternally beeping machines as I lay in an actual bed, with pillows and blankets and metal railings. I am also no longer alone.

Finnick is in the bed next to mine, staring at the ceiling, his eyes unfocused and his hands clenching the sides of the bed tightly enough to make his knuckles go white. This is enough to make me lurch out of my own head and my own agony, even for a brief moment.

Because the pain in Finnick's face, his eyes, his hands, his entire body is a physical representation of the black, gaping hole in my heart.

"Finnick," I rasp, sitting up.

He doesn't respond; the words don't even seem to register.

"Finnick Odair," I repeat, louder, harsher, my voice grating against the remains of my throat.

He starts slightly, looking around, his eyes darting around the room

"Peeta," he says, breathing a sigh of relief when he meets my eyes. "You're awake. You've been out for days."

"Where are we?"

"District 13."

"But - District 13 was bombed to pieces by the Capitol. It's been decimated by nuclear weapons, and still too radioactive even for mining. How can we have decided to come here? Why not District 12? Or 4? Any anywhere else?"

Finnick looks at me, blankly. "I - I don't know. No one has explained anything to me after the Quell." His face turns up towards the ceiling again, his eyes becoming unfocused.

I stare at the ceiling myself, trying to think things through. There has been outright rebellion, that much is certain. Why else would the Head Gamemaker and a Hunger Games mentor have taken rescued me - _and failed to rescue Katniss_ - from the Quell. That's why Finnick is here; he must have known about the rebellion from the start. HE could have let me die when I walked into the forcefield, or let Katniss and I die when the mist nearly killed us. And under that logic, Johanna must have known too - although she did not seem to take to Katniss, we still tried to keep both of us alive.

But something must have gone wrong. Because Finnick and I are not in the Capitol, we were taken out of the arena. But Johanna and Katniss were taken by the Capitol. Someone - namely, a certain mentor with a penchant for spirits - still needs to explain to me why _I_ was saved, and Katniss wasn't.

It does make sense why we aren't going back home. District 12 would be the first place the Capitol would look. I just hope that everyone back home is okay, even my family - I wouldn't want them to suffer for what the rebels did, and -

The door to the hospital room opens, cutting off my last thought. Haymitch enters, looking at Finnick and I in turn, looking incredibly solemn and his mouth set in a grim line. He's followed by an equally solemn Plutarch.

"Peeta?" Haymitch asks, his voice surprisingly quiet, but his eyes are glassy and starting to turn red. He's buzzed, he's at the point where he's just drunk enough to deal with bad news.

I look at him, waiting for him to being speaking again. There is no anxiety or apprehension - his bad news can't be worse than what I have been feeling ever since dared to take me out of the Quell without Katniss.

It's Plutarch who begins talking. "Peeta, I don't know if Finnick has told you, but we're in District 13 now. We were en route for a few days, dodging Capitol hovercrafts and trying to remain undetected. We didn't send out any communications, didn't draw any attention to ourselves - but because of that, we didn't receive any communications. Something has - well, something happened while we were in the air, and we wanted you to hear it from us."

I was wrong. It could be worse. Did Snow kill Katniss? My stomach heaves and froths with anxiety as I finally sit up, give them both my full attention.

"What? What happened?" I choke out, each word painful.

Haymitch is the one who answers, his words slurred.

"Kid - the moment we took you, Finnick and Beetee out of the arena, the Capitol snapped. They - they sent in bombs. The coal dust - just - everything went up in flames."

My head reels. District 12 bombed? Everything up in flames? Does that mean -

" - that District 12 is gone?" I finish my thought out loud.

Haymitch nods. But I know him, and I know that there is something else that he can't bring himself to tell me. The anxiety nearly makes me vomit, but I merely gag, and try to steady myself.

"Is- is anyone okay?" I whisper.

"Some did," he replies. "Gale Hawthorne got a lot of people out and into the meadow, away from the bombs- but a lot of people didn't make it."

"Mrs. Everdeen? Prim?"

"They're okay."

I breathe a slight sigh of relief. At least they are okay. At least something of Katniss' life survived. But I look at Haymitch again, and Plutarch, and their faces are still filled with foreboding and sadness - and is that pity?

"What - what about my family?"

"I'm so sorry, Peeta. But they didn't make it. No one from the VIllage Square made it."

My breath catches, and I fall back onto the pillows. I don't notice what they are telling me, the words don't register. Finnick says something, but my ears and minds are closed to anything but what is going on in my own head. Eventually, they must leave and night falls, because a nurse comes in and turn off the light. But my mind is still going.

My family is dead.

That thought hurts, stings, opens the hole in my chest wider until it's threatening to consume my entire body.

I wasn't particularly close to either of my brothers, or my mother. My brothers were older than me, more experienced than me, stronger, braver, more manly than me. My mother viewed me as the lesser son, the one who decorated cakes but didn't get his hands dirty with wood or coal or the pigs, Ryan and Iago did. But they took care of me. They raised me.

But I was close to my father. He let me decorate all of the cake when he saw how much I loved doing it. I was the only one who would eat the squirrel with him; him, because he liked the taste and me because it connected me, in some way, to Katniss Everdeen. When my mother declared Katniss as District 12's chance to get a victor, my father admonished her and pulled me into a hug, telling me that he believed in me and handed me a small bag of snickerdoodles, my favorite treat, so I could have something of home in the Capitol.

Other than Katniss, my father was the only one who ever believed in me.

And if my family is gone, lost in the Capitol's flames, and my father is gone, and Katniss is gone -

What the hell do I have to live for?

The last question swirls around and around in my head as a dose of medicine takes hold, and drags me down into what is unfortunately only a temporary respite from this nightmare.


End file.
